Now, indeed, was the American citizenship of her husband--and it had included his family also--of value to her. Madame de Lafayette's first letter to Mr. Monroe shows this. This dignified letter is preserved in the manuscript department of the New York Public Library and is here printed for the first time:
"Having learned that a minister of the United States has recently arrived in France, who has been sent by his government and invested with powers representing a people in whose interests I have some rights that are dear to my heart, I have felt that such misfortunes as I have not already suffered were no longer to be feared for me, that the most unjust of captivities was about to be at an end, and that my sufferings accompanied by irreproachable conduct towards the principles and towards the laws of my country, cause me to have confidence in the name of this protecting nation at a moment when the voice of justice is once more heard, and when the National Convention is undertaking to deliver such patriots as have been unjustly imprisoned. I have begun to hope that the wishes of my heart shall be fulfilled--that I may be returned to my children. For ten months I have been taken away from them. From the very moment of their birth they have heard that they have a second country, and they have the right to hope that they will be protected by it."
Through the official authority of Mr. Monroe, Madame de Lafayette was given money and passports. When Washington first heard of her plight, he sent her a reverent letter inclosing a thousand dollars, and he was unceasing in his correspondence with representatives in France and England for herself as well as for Lafayette. She sent her son, George Washington de Lafayette, to his illustrious namesake in America, and as "Madame Motier, of Hartford, Connecticut," she, with her two young daughters, made her way to Hamburg where, instead of taking ship for America, she took carriage across the wide spaces of Germany and Austria. Here she gained an audience with the emperor, and bowing at his feet asked permission to go to the fortress of Olmütz and stay with her husband until he was set free.
"Your request is granted," he said; "but as for Lafayette--I cannot free him; my hands are tied." Exactly what it was that had "tied the hands" of the great potentate has never been revealed.